Venus-Mars declination cycles and the stock market

[Jim Eshelman]

I don't have an easy way to calculate this carefully, but there are some statistics hinting that the combination of Venus and Mars declination cycles is one rhythm feeding into stock market fluctuations.

As the S&P 500 crosses 5000 today for the first time ever (it momentarily crossed mid-session yesterday afternoon), and the markets in general are behaving well, I'd been watching for just about this point in time - partly because of Jupiter's exact angularity in the Capsolar and partly because the Venus and Mars declination cycles are getting primed to soar high individually (and, thus, in combination).

I'll try to do some more careful measurements, but here is a chart of the two cycles for last year, this year, and next year to put their motion in perspective.

Venus & Mars.png

[Jim Eshelman]

Here are the Mars and Venus declination values added for the 1st and 16th of every month 2023-2025. I don't think we're going to find a close fit (and this way of doing it will miss exact tops and bottoms), but it's worth listing here, I think. (The value in parentheses is the rate of change which may be a separate and perhaps more useful value than the score itself.)

DJIA had a momentary top May 1, 2023 at 34,051 (that's about when the curve peaked), but then it started back up in late May for a general summer increase (while the curve was going down); this climb stopped about August 1 and gently rolled down hill until October 27, at which point a solid climb began. However, the graph curve continued downhill until mid-January so does not match the climb that began in late October. The slight dip January 16 was only for about a day.

2023
Jan 1 +2°46'
Jan 16 +7°20' (+4°34')
Feb 1 +14°30' (+7°10')
Feb 16 +22°25' (+7°55')
Mar 1 +29°10' (+6°45')
Mar 16 +36°54' (+7°44')
Apr 1 +43°42' (+6°48')
Apr 16 +47°56' (+4°14')
May 1 +49°29' (+1°33')
May 16 +48°06' (-1°23')
Jun 1 +43°35' (-4°31')
Jun 16 +37°07' (-6°28')
Jul 1 +29°23' (-7°44')
Jul 16 +21°29' (-7°56')
Aug 1 +14°39' (-6°50')
Aug 16 +11°13' (-3°26')
Sep 1 +9°24' (-1°49')
Sep 16 +7°01' (-4°23')
Oct 1 +2°18' (-4°43')
----------------
Oct 16 -4°02' (-6°20')
Nov 1 -12°22' (-8°20')
Nov 16 -20°55' (-8°33')
Dec 1 -29°23' (-8°28')
Dec 16 -36°52' (-7°29')

2024
Jan 1 -41°49' (-4°57')
Jan 16 -45°32' (-3°43')
Feb 1 -45°00' (+0°32')
Feb 16 -40°55' (+4°05')
Mar 1 -34°20' (+6°35')
Mar 16 -25°38' (+8°42')
Apr 1 -13°13' (+12°26')
Apr 16 -2°14' (+10°59')
------------------
May 1 +10°10' (+12°24')
May 16 +20°08' (+9°58')
Jun 1 +28°30' (+8°22')
Jun 16 +36°06' (+7°36')
Jul 1 +39°01'
Jul 16 +38°48'
Aug 1 +35°30'
Aug 16 +30°11'
Sep 1 +22°55'
Sep 16 +15°24'
Oct 1 +8°02'
Oct 16 +1°41'
------------------
Nov 1 -2°54'
Nov 16 -4°21'
Dec 1 -2°36'
-----------------
Dec 16 +2°17'

2025
Jan 1 +10°09'
Jan 16 +18°35'
Feb 1 +25°11'
Feb 16 +33°12'
Mar 1 +36°20'
Mar 16 +35°35'
Apr 1 +29°30'
Apr 16 +24°06'
May 1 +21°52'
May 16 +22°01'
Jun 1 +23°32'
Jun 16 +25°13'
Jul 1 +26°18'
Jul 16 +26°08'
Aug 1 +23°53'
Aug 16 +19°51'
Sep 1 +12°18'
Sep 16 +4°14'
------------------
Oct 1 -6°20'
Oct 16 -16°47'
Nov 1 -27°36'
Nov 16 -36°30'
Dec 1 -43°17'
Dec 16 -47°08'

[The bottom score is 1/1/26 at -47°18']

[SteveS]

Why Mars & Venus? Was this some Bradley work?

[Jim Eshelman]

Why Mars & Venus? Was this some Bradley work?

Yes.

[SteveS]

Interesting. I am seeing technicals that I have never seen in the market--don't know what to make of it except maybe a quick pop down in prices which needs to be bought IMO for much higher prices in future.

[SteveS]

Jim, can you explain how Bradley was using this technique in the market, or is too complicated? It just so happens that the Susan the author of my new book on Radical Charts for markets stated to always watch for the market you are trading when Venus (she says this is the money planet for NYSE) goes out of bounds. Can you or will SF explain to me how to take SF and determine when Venus goes out of bounds? Thanks.

[Jim Eshelman]

Jim, can you explain how Bradley was using this technique in the market, or is too complicated?

It was part of a very complicated process. It didn't stand alone but, rather, as part of his larger "siderograph" process. As a market tool, this charting was very impressive in the one one-year sample he showed in1947, but seems to have failed thereafter. I am less interested in it for market purposes than the wider range of showing geopolitical tension, world shifts, etc. for which the underlying technique should be viable.

The Venus-Mars declination cycles were specifically for the stock market, though. I'd have written them off long ago except, to my surprise, one night on the phone Don casually mentioned to me that there did still seem to be something about the Venus-Mars declination cycles in the market (and possibly other declination cycles). I didn't think much of it at the time (wrongly thinking that, if there was anything there, he'd eventually publish something - I didn't yet know he had very little time left). I'd forgotten about that until I was reading my new acquisition of Bradley's collected works and re-read Stock Mariet Prediction for the first time in several decades.

The basic method he initially used is this: Every planet pair has an ongoing rise-and-fall strength. For market purposes, it is weighted positive at sextile and trine, negative at opposition and square, and either positive or negative (depending on the pair) at conjunction. (You can see this really clearly in the Jupiter-Uranus cycle - coming back to conjunction this year - in which the conjunctions, oppositions, and squares map the well-established 3.5-year (42-month) market cycle.) You have to calculate the sine value of the separation of each individual planet pair every single day (which is a monstrous amount of work). The specific technique is to do this for all planet pairs from Jupiter-Saturn outward to get the long-term trends; except you add to those 10 outer planet pairs the Venus-Mars declination cycle (half of their combined declinations, essentially the midpoint of their declinations). This gives you the long-term trend. To combine middle-terms, you then first multiply the long-terms by a weighting factor determined experimentally (let's say for the moment you multiply it by four) and then calculate the daily values for the other 26 non-luminary aspect pairs (every day!). [Adding Moon aspects would provide the short-term or daily variations.]

The amount of work is beyond me. For more general "where do tensions vs. ease, pessimism vs. optimism rise and fall in the world," you would leave out the Venus-Mars declinations (used only for economic purposes) and not weight the long-terms. Just add everything together. I'd love to experiment with this but can't stop everything to do the math.

There is an offered piece of software to do all of this. I don't know if it gives the flexibility to divorce the distinctive economic factors from the others. Also a book with every year's curve drawn out for a century or so. I can't justify spending the $75-$100 for it so I've been skipping it but thought I would at least experiment with the Venus-Mars trends on their own.

It just so happens that the Susan the author of my new book on Radical Charts for markets stated to always watch for the market you are trading when Venus (she says this is the money planet for NYSE) goes out of bounds. Can you or will SF explain to me how to take SF and determine when Venus goes out of bounds? Thanks.

That's easier to track. Venus declination above 23N26 or below 23S26. Those are the extremes in the curve I marked above. You can just do a graphic ephemeris in SF using declination instead of longitude and showing Venus only (that's what I did above with Venus and Mars declinations).

Pick graphic ephemeris. Set location (say, NYC: it only affects time zone) and add the start date and period you want (I did three years above). In the middle pain, select transits. Change "longitude" to "declination." Set it at 45° or 30° so you don't have wasted space. Uncheck all boxers except "Deg GridLines" and "Date Gridlines." On the right, under Transits, pick only Venus. Run it.

You can read off the graph when it crosses 23° either north or south. (Hovering over the line gives you more detailed information.)

BTW, any Solar Fire list of declinations, including the Report button on a given chart, shows declinations of "out of bounds" planets (so-called) in red instead of black.

Running the above for three years beginning in 2023, you can see Venus above 23° N in most of the second quarter of 2023 and just briefly in late second quarter this year. It drops below 23° S in most of the fourth quarter of this year.

Possibly, though, this should be combined with the Mars scores and not taken alone; but the Venus out-of-bounds periods would be times that would drive the combined curve high and low anyway.

Consideration of these declination cycle raises the question of whether the planets' dec cycles are part of the picture. I mention this because Jupiter's declination is currently climbing and combines with the Mars curve over the next 12 months. Is this a measurement of greater productivity? Or no such thing. A surge of many declination cycles converge in peaks late Q2 this year: Is this irrelevant, or does the fast-cycle Mercury declination tip it? Or is this merely a typical behavior around the summer solstice? (It's a tighter peak this year than last year or next year.) Here is a picture of how all of these converge late Q2.

Q2.png

Jupiter peaked declination in the years right after the 1929 crash. It surely did not match the stock market alone in terms of rise and falls - quite the opposite - but does (on that occasion) mark the time when vast amounts of federal money were poured into the economy. Jupiter's peak catches the surging up during the Kennedy-Johnson years but is wrong in 1978-79 which were down-market years. By itself it seems (from a casual glance) wrong half the time and right half the time. Some of the times it's wrong, the Saturn cycle was a factor with tops or bottoms. There may be nothing to all of this, but there does seem to be enough smoke to poke around looking for a fire.

Taking Saturn lows - extreme southern declination - as marking down-market is interesting and not too bad of a match. It makes me wonder if the Saturn declination cycle peas are related to resistance to inflation. Look what happened in the '70s, for example. It bottom exactly around the '29 crash.

[SteveS]

Very Jim, thanks for the SF data. I have opened a dialouge with Susan who is a very experienced financial astrologer, and I know she has a litte experience with Bradley's work. I will try to investigate her experience/market experiece. Thanks again.

[SteveS]

Jim, I want to make sure I am on the same page as you with this technique. With the convergence late Q2---we are reading this as possible major top, correct?

[Jim Eshelman]

If there is anything to it, yes. By that, I mean: Yes, that's how this was originally presented.

Except it was never presented to my knowledge separate from the other outer planet aspect trends. I can't affirm anything about what this will do other than in pure theory that there may be something to these cycles. That's why I'm looking just a bit at the past.

There is another thing about this year's market that puzzles me. First, I think that overall it's going to be fantastic all year (aside from normal ups and downs along the main trend). But we have the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction coming up. You and I are used to thinking of Jupiter-Uranus as a primarily benefic aspect, but historically all hard aspects including the conjunction have been low points in the market (at least in the first half of the 20th century). Jupiter-Uranus is the closest aspect cycle fit to the 42-month stock market rhythm - and it fits really well. Based on this history, we should expect a significant LOW in the first part of this year - and I don't currently see that happening.

Here is a snapshot of a graph in Bradley's stock market theory paper mapping the Dow against Jupiter-Uranus aspects. Trines and sextiles across the top, hard major aspects across the bottom.

Scan 11 Feb 24 07·29·26 1707665402205.png

[SteveS]

Jim wrote:

That's why I'm looking just a bit at the past.

I understand Jim, I want to do the same but not sure how you generated that graph with SF. I would like to look at Black Monday Oct 19 1987 which affected the markets in the whole world.
Jim wrote:

There is another thing about this year's market that puzzles me. First, I think that overall it's going to be fantastic all year (aside from normal ups and downs along the main trend). But we have the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction coming up. You and I are used to thinking of Jupiter-Uranus as a primarily benefic aspect, but historically all hard aspects including the conjunction have been low points in the market (at least in the first half of the 20th century). Jupiter-Uranus is the closest aspect cycle fit to the 42-month stock market rhythm - and it fits really well. Based on this history, we should expect a significant LOW in the first part of this year - and I don't currently see that happening.

This is most interesting Jim along with Bradley’s graph!!! I had forgotten about this cycle. I understand exactly where you are coming from. I am somewhat puzzled too Jim with my technicals I monitor. The only thing that make possible sense to me is we have a violent shakeout down to clear all the small spec bulls out before the Jup-Ur 0 takes hold and sends the market flying back up.
I do see one glaring new chart that could confirm Bradley’s declination cycles in the market for Q2, but I have not done enough work with this new chart to place a lot of confidence in it. It comes from my new book with the founding chart of the S&P 500 Index: Mar 4 1957; 10:00 AM EST; NY, NY. If you will compute the June 2 SLR for this chart it is tremendous bullish with an “outstanding incident” SLR Jupiter partile 90 r Mercury. Then followed by another angular Jupiter June 29 SLR, but take a look at the Mars-Saturn July 26 SLR with this founding 1957 1957 S&P chart. Of course this means nothing, only if we see one of the greatest short term bull moves in June-July---and then the Mars-Saturn July 26 Paran SLR which last till Aug 22 2024 puts a major top on the market. Also in Aug we get a partile Mars-Jup cnj partile 90 Saturn. Only if we see a major bull move in June-July and a major top in Aug we should come back and revisit this declination thread by you Jim, IMO. There are other good symbolic factors with the 1792 NYSE chart but I will save em for later. Thanks Jim

[Jim Eshelman]

I understand Jim, I want to do the same but not sure how you generated that graph with SF. I would like to look at Black Monday Oct 19 1987 which affected the markets in the whole world.

I thought I gave step by step instructions above on creating this with the SF graphic ephemeris function. In any case, for 1987 the combined curve peaks in Q2 and early Q3 and then both Mars and Venus curves start sloping down sharply. Both become negative declinations early in Q4 with a Venus bottom in December and Mars bottom in Q1 '88 (when was the turn-around after the drop?). We want, of course, the combined Vens + Mars, which you can eyeball but looking halfway between the lines as if looking at their midpoint. - I'll come back and delete this later, but here is a 1986-88 chart. It looks to me like a sharp drop in 1987 Q4 tumbling from a top in early Q3.

1987.png

In short: Market highs in late Q2/early Q3 and market lows in Q4, perhaps bleeding into the new year (so far as this one factor can show, since there are many intertwining rhythms).

BTW, Jupiter's declination was on a climb at that point, so I don't think we can rely on it as an indicator - it's against trend. But Saturn was in deep southern declination, which I am speculating means no constraints against inflation. Were interest rates low and easy at the time? Saturn dragged along the lowest declinations in the 1986-1990 period. Here is a 50-year graph. - BTW, in the present decade 2020 shows Saturn coming off a declination bottom in 2015-2019, which my current thoughts say means that those were least constraint on inflation (lowest interest rates) that were ready to start climbing beginning in 2020-2021 with the next maximum-restraint (high interest rates) predicted for early-to-mid 2030 (around 2032-33).

50yr Saturn.png

[Jim Eshelman]

For 1987, to try to catch the strongest input of other rhythms, here are the outer planet aspects. These aren't meant to show highs and lows on their own but, rather, the peaks and troughs of individual aspect curves. Nonetheless, their central peak time would mathematically tip the combined curve heavily. I'll color them red and blue according to whether they theoretically would have been high market (blue) or low market (red) contributors. They don't perform so well for October 1987, the Jupiter-Uranus trine (a theoretical center of a peak time) hitting right at the crisis. - I don't know if you ever got into Commander Williams' astro-economics, but his entire published method was watching the Jupiter-Saturn, Jupiter-Uranus, and Saturn-Uranus aspects, going high for trines and sextiles and low for conjunctions, oppositions, and squares, combining the three cycles. It worked really well for decades as a general idea, but doesn't look like it worked in 1987.

1987 Feb 12 Jupiter-Uranus square
1987 Apr 4 Jupiter-Neptune square
1987 May 23 Jupiter-Saturn trine
1987 Jun 21 Jupiter-Uranus trine
1987 Oct 24 Jupiter-Uranus trine
1987 Nov 21 Jupiter-Saturn trine
1988 Feb 12 Saturn-Uranus conjunction
1988 Mar 12 Jupiter-Uranus trine
1988 Mar 18 Jupiter-Neptune trine
1988 Apr 22 Jupiter-Neptune trine
1988 Apr 27 Jupiter-Pluto opposition
1988 Jun 26 Saturn-Uranus conjunction
1988 Oct 18 Saturn-Uranus conjunction

[SteveS]

Jim wrote:

I don't know if you ever got into Commander Williams' astro-economics, but his entire published method was watching the Jupiter-Saturn, Jupiter-Uranus, and Saturn-Uranus aspects, going high for trines and sextiles and low for conjunctions, oppositions, and squares, combining the three cycles.

His book is on the way to me from Amazon. I ordered it because I read a brief caption on internet Commander Williams thought the Mars-Jupiter 0 180 were very important aspects in NYSE for major market cycle lows. I definitely want to check his words/book out since we saw what happen with that Oct 27 2023 'OI' SLR major cycle hit of the angular partile Mars 180 Jup for the NYSE, which launched the market into a bullish frenzy. I will post on the Commander’s work after reading/studying his book. I am really anxious to take his work to see if I can correlated any more Sidereal Returns with his researched aspects for the NYSE. Thanks